MINEHEAD mayor Cllr Jean Parbrook has been invited to “bring a mop and bucket and clean our toilets” by angry Jubilee Gardens café owner Val Pickard.

The mayor had said the public could use the café’s toilets when nearby public facilities were closed.

Town councillors were told at their meeting last week that the council would take over three of the town’s public toilets at the end of March, but not those at the Carousel and Warren Road.

Cllr Parbrook told the meeting: “The Jubilee Gardens café has recently built new facilities which can be used by the public at a modest cost and which will make up for the loss of the Carousel.”

But Mrs Pickard, who runs the popular seafront café with her husband Steve, said that “already the public are queuing up” to use the new modern toilet installed for the use of customers and the café was finding it difficult to cope.

“We have been charging the public 20p to use the toilets but now we will be forced to put up the price to £1 to pay for more staff supervision and increased cleaning costs. Why should we be cleaners for general public toilets?

“It is only a single toilet, which is fine for our own customers but totally inadequate when people come pouring off the beach or from the train station.

“I am furious that no-one from the council consulted us about this and we will struggle to cope during the summer season,” Mrs Pickard told the Free Press yesterday (Thursday.)

“If the mayor or councillors would like to sit outside the toilet with a mop and bucket, we will happily include them in our rota.”

Cllr Parbrook said that she had made the statement in good faith. As far as she was aware, the Jubilee Gardens cafe toilets were open to the public at a charge and it was up to the owners to make any decision about the future.

She said that the Carousel toilets were in a very bad state of repair and the Warren Road facilities were subject to covenants owned by Butlin’s.